Friday, July 01, 2011

There's no "I" in "We"

As I noted a few months back, I handle a series of CIO profiles for the magazine where I work. The CIOs fill out a questionnaire, and I turn their responses into English.

In the earlier post, I mentioned my incredulity that one subject responded to the question, "What business leader would you like to have lunch with?" with the answer "Dagny Taggart" of Taggart Transcontinental Railroad--the fictional creation of Ayn Rand, in the novel Atlas Shrugged. (I should remind you at this point that the publication where I'm copy chief has a circulation of 400,000-plus, and a very-well-trafficked website. And he's a corporate bigwig.)

What I didn't notice till now, because I had a ton of responses to go through and won't be running the Q&A till August, is his response to the very next question.

-- My biggest business-related pet peeve is … Use of the pronoun "I" in formal business communications.

There you have it, folks: The world's first collectivist Randian.

(As a belated part of our blogoversary extravaganza--by the way, folks, where are my presents?--previous thoughts on things Randian here, here, here, and here.)